The Hindu : Other States / Rajasthan News : Spotlight on tackling hunger

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Sunday, Mar 06, 2005

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Spotlight on tackling hunger

By Our Special Correspondent

JAIPUR, MARCH 5. Experts participating in an international workshop on food security, which began here on Friday, discussed the ways and means of achieving the target of "food security for all" in terms of availability, accessibility and absorption and reducing the number of food insecure people to half by 2015. The new dimension added to macro food security in the wake of liberalisation of trade in agricultural commodities is high on the workshop's agenda.

The three-day workshop is the first under a joint project of Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and the United Nations World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) on food security. It has been organised by Jaipur-based Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in collaboration with the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

The focus of the mega meet is on the challenges of tackling persistence of hunger and food insecurity among considerable sections of population in the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. A large number of senior development and policy analysts of FAO, U.N. World Food Programme, UNCTAD, WIDER, ICSSR and selected universities, along with the representatives of non-Government organisations are attending the event.

The noted agricultural economist and former Chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), Shabd S. Acharya, in his inaugural address, pointed out that the progress on food security front had been substantial in the countries where the national Governments had focused on generating basic goods and paid attention on creating an environment that enabled other factors to be effective in overcoming hunger, poverty and malnutrition.

The Director of IDS, Sarthi Acharya, in his presidential address, said that despite the annual growth in national economy by 5 to 7 per cent, only a few sectors had forged ahead but large sections of society could not. He laid emphasis on adoption of sectoral planning and identification of target groups to ensure an equal distribution of gains which would help achieve the goals of poverty alleviation. The Director of ICSSR, Arun Bali, said the ongoing project had focused on crucial aspects of food security and the ICSSR was running several collaborative academic programmes with international organisations on similar issues. Dr. Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis from WIDER announced that the second workshop under the project would be organised in Helsinki on September 14 and 15 this year.

The participants in the technical session on "international trade, WTO and food security" deliberated on the scenario in the South Asian countries and Sub-Saharan Africa while making a comparative analysis. Ramesh Chand, Principal Economist, National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi, said the South Asian countries needed to strike a balance between grain self-sufficiency and trade by carefully weighing crop production choices.

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